Are You Desperate Enough?

Are You Desperate Enough?

2018-12-18T01:26:00+00:00

Tess and I have had the privilege now of helping several people get started on their ecommerce businesses, and it has been a massive learning curve for us as well as for those who have started their journey. The first couple we mentored came to us in 2012, and since then, we’ve been asked many times if we could help get someone on the right track. We even got to the point where we thought it might be easier to develop a video course to help, and began to develop one in conjunction with a gentleman who had approached us to be mentored.

Once Tess became pregnant, it became more and more difficult to develop the course to the level we wanted it, and put it on an indefinite hiatus. The reality is, helping others can be both enjoyable and frustrating at the same time. Looking back, we had to ask ourselves, why when given the same information, do some couples do well, while others just don’t seem to move forward? Every person we’ve spoken to has been an intelligent individual, who is keen to escape the 9-to-5, and live the lifestyle that they’ve seen us live, yet some seem to persevere until they get their breakthrough, while others give up, or just don’t do the work, or get sidetracked by other “bright shiny objects”.

While I’m sure everyone has their own personal challenges, the one trait that everyone has that have succeeded seems to be desperation. They are literally desperate to succeed, and cannot see themselves having to to work in a job for one day longer than they have to.

These aren’t always people who are struggling financially either, rather they just have a red hot burning desire to do whatever it takes to get the life they want. Others who have not succeeded, simply didn’t want it bad enough. They thought they might like to try, but always, in the back of their mind, they knew that they could always fall back on their job if needs be. Besides, if they really tried, they might fail right? Well, I can tell you now, if that is your attitude, save your money, and don’t bother, because you’ve already failed. When I was training to be an air traffic controller, we learned that the air traffic control course had a 50% failure rate, which is considered extremely high. Well guess what? Businesses have an over 90% failure rate when it comes to surviving for 5 years. Think air traffic control might be hard? Try succeeding in business. I can tell you now, becoming an air traffic controller was a lot easier than becoming a moderately successful entrepreneur.

I’d loved to say that we’re past this point of needing desperation as well, but sadly that’s not the case. There have been many points throughout the last 8-10 years (yes it has been that long) where we’ve become complacent, or lazy, and have needed a kick up the butt to move onward and upward. Nowadays we don’t even want to lose that desperation. We know that it’s too easy to lose it once the money has been flowing for a while. Don’t get me wrong, we’re happy to take a few weeks off here and there, but we always want to be desperate to make the most of this one life that we’ve been given.

The greatest benefit of helping others, whether through this blog, our books, or in person has been finding others who have that same desperation. Whenever we meet someone now who wants to know more about how to do what we do, we can get a feel pretty quickly for whether or not they have that desperation, and that determines whether or not we have a polite “fairy-floss” conversation, or invite them to a coffee to really find out where they’re at.

It should have been obvious to us in hindsight. Our business has always moved forward in leaps and bounds whenever we’ve been desperate, and stagnated whenever we’ve gotten comfortable. Desperation can come from many sources. From wanting to never have a Boss again, or going through a period in business where you just can’t seem to crack that glass ceiling in your profitability, or you’ve finally achieved the passive income of your dreams, and you’re desperate to make sure that you don’t lose what you’ve gained.

If you feel that the entrepreneurial lifestyle is for you, you really have to look in the mirror and make sure you want it badly enough. So badly that you’re willing to work your butt off for the next ten years if you have to. So badly that your friends and family can’t dissuade you. So badly that you consider being stuck in a 9-to-5 job a much greater risk than the idea that your business might fail.